Rapid optimization of low-thrust trajectories for multi-target detection under complex gravitational perturbation

The large amount of space debris in Earth’s orbit has seriously affected the operational safety of spacecraft. Therefore, this paper proposes a fast optimization algorithm for multi-target detection trajectories based on Bezier-shaped method, targeting non-cooperative targets such as space debris in key areas of the high orbit. This method considers non-spherical gravity perturbation models with different accuracies to achieve rapid design of transfer trajectories; according to different detection missions, this method is also applied under different conditions of free and fixed flight time to achieve a multi-target detection. Compared with the Gauss pseudospectral method, the method proposed in this paper achieved excellent optimization results using an extremely short computation time, significantly improving the efficiency of trajectory optimization under complex gravitational perturbations. This is of great significance for the initial mission analysis of detecting a large amount of space debris in Earth’s orbit in the near future.